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32.
GERARD DILLON (1916 - 1971)
The Clown
Oil on Board, 23 x 48cm (9 x 19”)
Signed
Provenance: The Tom Caldwell Gallery, circa 1980, where purchased by present owner (original verso)
€8,000 - 12,000
This work dates from the early 1940’s but Dillon’s subjects during this period usually relied on his everyday life so is not clear who or what this clown rep-
resents. An avid cinema and theatre attendee, subjects from his first solo exhibition in the Country Shop in 1942 include ‘Petrouschka’ reflecting his interest
in ballet and ‘Hedy Lamarr and Ginger Rogers’ exhibited at his joint exhibition with Daniel O’Neill at the Contemporary Picture Galleries in 1943 represent his
passion for film.
On the outbreak of war in 1939, Dillon was unable to return to England because of travel restrictions. Stating that he was first inspired to paint from seeing
works by Marc Chagall and Sean Keating, he moved to Dublin from Belfast and immersed himself in the thriving artistic community. In a letter to his friend
Madge Connolly in 1944, Dillon commented that he viewed the war years as his ‘years of training.’
His training began with weekly meetings with progressive artists and intellectuals at the Country Shop on St Stephen’s Green. It was at one of these meetings
that Dillon met artists Basil Rákóczi and Kenneth Hall who were the leaders of the Avant-Garde White Stag group. The White Stag Group held regular exhibi-
tions and lectured on psychoanalysis and the subconscious in their premises on Baggot Street. Dillon’s placing of the clown figure in the foreground shows
that he was influenced by Rákóczi’s resting Aran figures from this period.
Championed by the Modernist Mainie Jellett, Dillon used her studio in Dublin where he may have seen reproductions of Picasso’s early clown paintings. The
clown motif regularly features in the artist’s oeuvre till 1971. The nighttime scene of a figure daydreaming with a smiling moon is however, an aspect adopted
from Chagall’s reverie of life.
With regard to the identity of the unmasked clown, perhaps it’s worth remembering what George Campbell observed in an appreciation of the artist in
1974, ‘ ...he had little time for anything that didn’t relate to his painting fantasy world... and that practically everything he painted was a self portrait-himself
dickeyed up in some costume or another.’
Karen Reihill
September, 2015